> As far as Postgres is concerned, there's no deadlock here, only a slow client
that could be true if we used explicit locks. all our accesses are of the
form "learn everything you need to know to do the transaction, then open the
database, do it, and close". there are some really long SELECT's (which make
dns zone files) but they can't block unless the file system is blocking the
write()'s in the client, which would only happen in NFS, which we don't use.
your scenario is not implausible, however, and i will watch for it if it
happens again after i upgrade. i didn't mean to waste any of you guys' time
at this point, i just wanted to let you know about this in case it was another
data point in a problem you were tracking elsewhere, or in case i'm able to
track it more closely later.
thanks for your quick reply.